5 Grains of Corn

Thanksgiving is distinctly an American
holiday. There is nothing like it anywhere else in the world.
It celebrates neither a savage battle nor the fall of a great city.
It does not mark the anniversary of a great conqueror or the
birthday of a famous statesman.

The American Thanksgiving Day is the
expression of a deep feeling of gratitude by our people for the rich
productivity of the land, a memorial of the dangers and hardships
through which we have safely passed, and a fitting recognition of
all that God in His goodness had bestowed upon us.

In early New England, it was the custom at
Thanksgiving time to place five kernels of corn at every plate as a
reminder of those stern days in the first winter when the food of
the Pilgrims was to depleted that only five kernels of corn were
rationed to each individual at a time. The Pilgrim Fathers
wanted their children to remember the sacrifice, sufferings, and
hardships through which they had safely passed -- a fitting hardship
that made possible the settlement of a free people in a free land.

They wanted to keep alive the memory of that
sixty-three-day trip taken in the tiny Mayflower. They desired
to keep alive the thought of that stern and rock-bound coast, its
inhospitable welcome, and the first terrible winter which took such
a toll of lives.

They did not want their descendants to forget
that on that day in which their rations was reduced to five kernels
of corn, only seven healthy colonists remained to nurse the sick,
and that nearly half their members lay in the windswept graveyard on
the hill. They did not want to forget that when the May flower
sailed back to England in the spring, only the sailors were aboard.

The use of five kernels of corn placed by
each plate was a fitting reminder of a heroic past. It may
still serve as a useful means of recalling those great gifts for
which we are grateful to God.

(On Thanksgiving Day, a family might begin
the meal with five kernels of corn on each plate, as someone reds
this short story. Those present might go around the table,
each person offering one thing for which they are grateful in the
past year.)